es of
life.

The pictures of Leopold Robert I find charming. They are full of vigor
and nobleness; they express a nature where all is rich, young, and on
a large scale. Those that I have seen are so happily expressive of the
thoughts and perceptions of early manhood, I can hardly regret he
did not live to enter on another stage of life, the impression now
received is so single.

The effort of the French school in Art, as also its main tendency in
literature, seems to be to turn the mind inside out, in the coarsest
acceptation of such a phrase. Art can only be truly Art by presenting
an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life. But then
it _is_ a symbol that Art seeks to present, and not the fact itself.
These French painters seem to have no idea of this; they have not
studied the method of Nature. With the true artist, as with Nature
herself, the more full the representation, the more profound and
enchanting is the sense of mystery. We look and look, as on a flower
of which we cannot scrutinize the secret life, yet b; looking seem
constantly drawn nearer to the soul that causes and governs that life.
But in the French pictures suffering is represented by streams of
blood,--wickedness by the most ghastly contortions.

I saw a movement in the opposite direction in England; it was in
Turner's pictures of the later period. It is well known that Turner,
so long an idol of the English public, paints now in a manner which
has caused the liveliest dissensions in the world of connoisseurs.
There are two parties, one of which maintains, not only that the
pictures of the late period are not good, but that they are not
pictures at all,--that it is impossible to make out the design, or
find what Turner is aiming at by those strange blotches of color.
The other party declare that these pictures are not only good, but
divine,--that whoever looks upon them in the true manner will not fail
to find there somewhat ineffably and transcendently admirable,--the
soul of Art. Books have been written to defend this side of the
question.

I had become much interested about this matter, as the fervor of
feeling on either side seemed to denote that there was something real
and vital going on, and, while time would not permit my visiting other
private collections in London and its neighborhood, I insisted on
taking it for one of Turner's pictures. It was at the house of one of
his devoutest disciples, who has arranged everyth